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Ah, February, the month of love. Valentine’s Day is fast approaching (though if you walked into any department store it’s been approaching since mid-January when all the red hearts and decorations came out.

This month, all names will be of French origin! As France is often called the city of love this seemed appropriate and was a lot of fun to find all these different names.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to music options in 2018. Which is good because everyone has different taste and different things they enjoy.

And for writers, we all have different things we like listening to when we work.

Now, I work in a music store so I’m literally surrounded by music pretty much all day, every day to the point that I can’t work in silence. I’m listening to Louden Swain’s, Sky Alive, album as I write this.

I’m also a big movie watcher and the way music affects a scene and the mood of the story is something that has always interested me.

For this reason, it’s always super important for me to have music on while I’m writing.

Now, I have different playlists for each of my projects. I used to listen to the same things for everything I was working on (usually film scores), but found this really didn’t help as all it did was make me want to watch the film.

By having different playlists, I can pick the music I listen to for each project and the songs on each of these playlists really helps me get in the right mindset for what I’m working on.

When I’m working on Brave Young Boys I listen to a lot of songs about war and loss. Carrie Underwood’s, “Just a Dream”; Dean Brody’s, “Brothers”; and Rise Against’s, “Hero of War” are just a few.

It’s not the most cheery thing to listen to, but it definitely gets me in the perfect mindset for working.

Kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, I have a different writing project that involves two people going on a road trip. This playlist consists of (mostly) happy, fun songs.

“Beat This Summer” by Brad Paisley; “500 Miles” by The Proclaimers”’ and “mmmbop” by Hanson are three songs I listen to a lot when working on this particular story.

However, not every song directly relates to a theme of the novel.

In some cases a song will remind me of a character. Or I’ll hear a song and go “oh my god that’s perfect.”

Two instances where this has happened are with “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett and “Lost Boy” by Ruth B (for two very different writing endeavors).

Everyone likes music. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who didn’t like music. It’s a universal thing, something that, even if you don’t speak the language in the song, you can still bob your head to the beat.

As a writer, different types of music inspire both my work and myself. I find it helps keep the story moving, gives me ideas for different things, and gives me a connection to my characters. It’s a language that transcends the usual barriers of most other languages.

Now I’d like to hear from you! Do you listen to music when writing? Is there a particular style of music you prefer to listen to, whether in life or when working?

Let me know down below and also let me know if you want to talk more about writing playlists!

There are tons of blog posts out there that talk about world building. There are entire books that discuss the different aspects put into creating your own fictional world and all the intricacies of it.
So naturally, because it’s been done so many time before, I decided to add to the madness and give you my thoughts on world building in this new series of posts.

World Building is still a process I’m figuring out for myself so I thought through these posts I could share with you what I’ve learning about the different elements of creating your own fictional universe.

The first and most basic step is deciding on what type of world you’re going to have.

Is it a dystopian world? Utopian? Conformist or evolutionary? Medieval or fantasy?

This is the most basic thing you need to determine because the type of world you’re creating will literally affect every single thing you write and decide for your story.

If you’ve got a dystopian society, the world you create isn’t going to be bright and colourful. It won’t be full of rainbows and people won’t be skipping down the streets. It’ll be dark and gritty and you’ll use a thesaurus to find every variation of the words “dark” and “gritty” to describe the setting.

On the flip side, if the world you create is a utopia then there probably will be rainbows and skipping involved. Your characters will probably be happy with their lives and things will seem good.

Now obviously neither of those descriptions are set in stone and there is always the possibility of a light at the end of the dystopian tunnel or of a dark underworld side in your utopia. But you get the general idea.

Choosing the type of world is just the first step in world building. It’s the first layer of a very elaborate cake. It’s the base for many different things that will happen in your story and happen to your characters.

The world you build does not have to fit exactly in to description box of the world you choose. But you can’t choose to have a totally normal story and then, five pages before the end, a dragon suddenly appears and eats everyone.

I mean, sure, that would be really cool, but it’s not really plausible when the rest of your story was set in a normal, average, every day town where, previous to those last five pages, there were no dragons.

And if you do choose to do that, you better have a really cool sequel lined up and ready to go.

Now, as I said before, this is only the first step. There are so many other aspects to world building that turn it from an idea into an actual thing. The people, the history, all the stuff that doesn’t necessarily make it into your book, but is still so important to your story.

In the coming months I will be talking about world building and the various things that go into it.

If there is anything you would like talked about or anything you would like to add let me know down below!

And let me know: is there a type of world you prefer writing over others? Do you prefer a fantasy universe? A dystopian world? The possibilities are endless and I want to know what you think!

Guess who’s back? Back again? Are you singing, cause I was as I typed that.

Have you ever briefly lost your motivation to work? And then as you get your motivation back, you become overwhelmed by how much you need to do. Then you lose your motivation again as a result of that overwhelming stress? Yup, that has been my life for about a year now.

I’ll keep my reasoning brief here. There was a lot going on in 2016 that made me lose all my motivation for writing.

I was working at a job I hated, then that place closed down, a new store opened up and I was helping to get the place ready so majority of my time was spent at work.

I’d come home and I was tired and the less writing I was doing, the more overwhelmed I was getting by how much there was to do.

I was putting out half attempts at blog posts and even worse fanfic chapters. I started getting some really negative reviews, especially on one of my stories. Not like, “hey, didn’t enjoy this chapter that much”. More along the lines of telling me I should quit writing and that I was terrible at it.

I try not to let it get to me. It’s part of the business right? Not everyone is going to like your work and that’s totally fine. But I was already feeling overwhelmed and stressed and all these things combined was really making me lose my love of writing.

So I decided to take a step back. I focused on work and myself and really figuring things out.

The place I work now is fantastic, best job I’ve ever had. I’m going back to school in a few weeks and I’m beyond excited. I didn’t think I’d ever go back to school, but I decided it was the best choice for my life and my future and I can’t wait.

And I started writing again. I’ve been rewriting the old chapters of my fanfics to a level I am much happier with. I also continued working on my novel and have been writing blog posts that I actually enjoy.

I found it was becoming too much about the numbers and what other people thought and less about what I liked and what I thought.

This time away has definitely been beneficial. I feel refreshed and excited to be back and I can’t wait to see what 2018 has in store.

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Quote of the Week

“I became insane, with long intervals or horrible sanity.” – Edgar Allan Poe

Word of the Month

Resolution

Noun

Pronunciation: re-zol-oo-shun

Definition: A firm decision to do or not to do something.

Origin: 1350–1400; Middle English

Writing Prompt

If you’re reading this, you’ve been in a coma for almost 20 years now, we’re trying a new technique. We don’t know where this message will end up in your dream, but we hope we’re getting through. Please wake up! We miss you.

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